Labour Officer To Labour Minister ‘Do your home-work’

LABOUR MINISTER JOE HAMILTON MUST DO HIS HOMEWORK, or risk plunging
the sector into crisis said Senior Labour Officer and First Vice President of the Guyana Public
Service Union (GPSU) Ms. Dawn Gardner.
Gardner has had enough of Hamilton constantly speaking ‘through his hat’ on issues related to
his ministerial portfolio.
Gardner spoke to www.aroundtheregions.com of her concerns after reading many bogus
information attributed to the Minister in the local press. While the Minister might “mean well”,
Gardner wants Hamilton correct those blunders made public.
“I think that the Minister is being misled on a number of issues but there are some difficulties
that I personally have, my concern is that as a Minister of Labour I don’t think that he is so
familiar with all these things (Labour related issues),” Gardner said.
One recent case in point is what Gardner said were illegal deductions from nurses’ salaries
dating back to 2018 on alleged absence from duties.
“We wrote the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health as it relates to the illegal
deductions of monies from the nurses’ salaries for absent days in 2018, we also quoted the laws.
What was funny, is what I read in an article from the Minister of Labour stating that the Union
had no role to play (and) it wasn’t the Union’s mandate to get involved in this matter,” Gardner
said.

“In essence he was saying that with these nurses if money was deducted from their salaries, they
should report the matter to the Labour Officer immediately in Linden. I was really lost when I
heard that,” the trade unionist said.
She reminded that those nurses are represented by a recognisable and reputable local labour body
and if they have an issue then it’s their right to get the Union involved and not to the Labour
Ministry.
“The Ministry of Labour will only get involved in matters like these when there is a breakdown
at the bilateral level where there is a union. So, it’s either the Minister is not familiar with the
law or he is being misled. I have some serious concerns,” Gardner said.
Minister Hamilton should have access to the country’s labour laws and should familiarise
himself with them, Gardner counselled. She said since he oversees a vital sector, his ignorance of
the laws can have long-lasting negative effects not only on workers but the entire country, the
GPSU official warned.
She said the Minister should school himself on the vagaries of the sector he manages, since from
his public utterances, his counsellors will be graded an ‘F’.
Gardner is unsure whether Hamilton is being deliberately misled. Even so, he has to take
responsibility for some of the misinformation from his mouth now in the public domain.
“I would expect that even if any one of his technical staff gives him information that he requests
he should also ask them for the source, where did they get it from and he can do his research as
he is the one going out there and give information,’ she counselled.
“Before we go out there and give information, we should first do our research and to make
sure that whatever we are saying can stand up to scrutiny. We have to be careful and one
would (not) expect… coming from a Minister is misleading information,” Gardner
declared.